


Sardonic - Grinch

by cutsycat



Series: Dictionary.Com Word of the Day Drabbles [1468]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-18 16:29:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21646987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cutsycat/pseuds/cutsycat
Summary: Unbeknownst to Gibbs, the team has decided to hold a grinch competition at his house.
Series: Dictionary.Com Word of the Day Drabbles [1468]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/444514
Comments: 16
Kudos: 21
Collections: Cutsycat's NCIS Happy Holidy LJ Challenge 2019





	Sardonic - Grinch

**Author's Note:**

> Another dictionary.com word of the day drabble. This time from 05/08/2003 for the word [sardonic](http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/2003/05/08/sardonic).
> 
> sardonic[ sahr-don-ik ]  
> adjective  
> characterized by bitter or scornful derision; mocking; cynical; sneering:  
> a sardonic grin.
> 
> This is for Day 2: Grinch of the [Happy Holiday Challenge on lj](https://ncis-discuss.livejournal.com/226080.html).

“You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch,” Tony sang as he danced around Gibbs’ house. “You really are a heel.”

"DiNozzo!" Gibbs yelled.

"Whoops." Tony turned around, doing his best to look innocent. "Hey, boss."

“What is this, DiNozzo?” Gibbs growled.

“This is the Twisted Grinch Christmas Party.”

“The what? And why is it at my house?”

“Well if we held it elsewhere you wouldn’t come and you’re the grinchiest of us all.”

Before Gibbs could respond, Ziva entered and pulled out of her sardonic repertoire, “Are you in trouble already, Tony?” Her tone was filled with scorn. It was just like Tony to be in trouble before the party even started.

“No, I’m not.” Tony ignored her distaste for him as he generally did. “I was just explaining the competition to the boss.”

“Shouldn’t you wait until everyone is here?”

Tony waved his hand at her dismissively. “I’ll cover the rules later. This was just a summary.”

“We’ll talk about this later, DiNozzo,” Gibbs snarled.

“Sure, boss. Can’t wait.”

McGee shook his head at Tony as he entered Gibbs’ house. “You really have no fear, do you?”

“I have plenty of fear, McGee.”

“Just not of Gibbs.”

“Gibbs is a teddy bear, Tim,” Abby pronounced as she followed Tim into the living room.

“There’s no reason to be scared of the boss,” Tony agreed. “He’s just grumpy.”

“Isn’t that the point of the grinch competition?” Ducky pondered as he joined the rest of the team in the living room.

“Nah. The competition is about more than being grumpy, Ducky.” Jimmy waved as he joined everyone else.

“Great. Now that everyone is here, let’s start the competition.”

“How does this work, Tony?” Abby bounced excitedly in her seat.

“Well Ziva, Ducky, and Jimmy have all agreed to be judges. Each of them will hold their own rounds. After all three rounds are over, the scores from each round will be totaled and the winner will be announced.”

“Jimmy will be doing a round of Grinch trivia.”

“Movie trivia? You’re sure to win that, Tony.” Abby pouted.

Tony shrugged. “You never know.” He turned to Ducky, “Ducky will be hosting the grumpiest lines contest.”

“And Ziva?” Abby asked.

Tony turned to Ziva and gestured for her to announce the competition she’d decided to do. 

“I will be running a present stealing competition. Whoever has stolen the most presents in the time limit wins.”

Tony grinned and clapped his hands. “Alright. Let’s get this party started. What should we start with first?”

Gibbs just grunted and Abby grinned at him, “Let’s start with something easy for Gibbs and do the grumpiest lines contest.”

Tony nodded, “Sounds good to me. Come on, McGee.”

Gibbs, Abby, Tony, and McGee all lined up in front of the judges and waited for more information as to what they should do. Ducky turned to the other judges and whispered, “Come up with your favorite grumpy saying and we’ll each give them one saying and then we can judge them all and score them on who portrays the line in the grumpiest manner.”

Ziva and Jimmy nodded and the three whispered ideas before finally settling on the three sayings they would use. Jimmy’s choice was “Hate, hate, hate. Hate, hate, hate. Double hate. Loathe entirely.” Ducky picked, “Don’t be a Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins.” Ziva decided to go with the classic, “Bah Humbug.” 

Each of the four contestants took turns repeating the phrases in their grumpiest voices. Tony’s turned out more humorous than grumpy. Abby’s attempts were too excited to be grumpy. McGee’s voice was just too timid to be found grumpy. Gibbs took that round hands down as he definitely had grumpy down.

“How about the present stealing event next before we have to wrack our brains over Grinch trivia.”

Everyone agreed and Ziva brought out a huge pile of presents. They were mostly empty boxes that had been wrapped. She dumped them into a pile in front of the tree. She then handed santa sacks out to each person.

“The person with the most stolen presents in ten minutes wins. This is a no holds barred anything goes event. So feel free to get physical and steal from the other players sacks,” Ziva ordered with a maniacal glint to her eyes.

Ziva stepped back out of the way and shouted, “Go!”

McGee immediately dived for the pile of presents and started shoving presents into his sack. Abby dashed for the pile, bending over and grabbing presents one by one. Tony shoved his way in between Abby and McGee and started grabbing presents from the pile and from Abby and McGee’s sacks whenver he got a chance.

Gibbs, on the other hand, shot Ziva a disgruntled look and waited until one of the others had a decent amount of presents in their sack before sneakily stealing the sack and dumping the presents into his sack before handing it back to them. Neither Abby nor McGee even realized that Gibbs had stolen their sack and presents. They just continued shoveling gifts into their sacks.

Tony immediately grabbed his sack back from Gibbs before Gibbs could tip the presents into his sack. Gibbs just shrugged and waited for one of the others to get close to full again before repeating his trick. Gibbs pulled off his trick again right before time was called. 

Everyone counted out their sacks both Abby and McGee protesting when they realized they only got 5 and 6 presents respectively. Tony did a little bit better around 35 presents. Gibbs won with a good 50 presents. 

So far it was looking like Gibbs was going to be the clear winner of the competition, but the trivia competition was worth the most points, so it was still anyone’s game. Jimmy started with a couple of softball questions like “Where does the Grinch take place?” and “Who are the people who live in Whoville?”

He then moved onto obscure facts about the film, not necessarily things that happened in the film, but facts about how much money the film made and how many grinch costumes they went through and what not. To no one’s surprise Tony came in first. The big surprise, however, was that Gibbs came in second with Abby taking third and Tim fourth. 

With two wins and one second place, Gibbs easily took home the title of “The Grinch” and was given a grinch mug and a couple bags of good coffee beans and some gift cards to the local coffee shops. Gibbs then proceeded to chase everyone away with his grinchness except for Tony who he forced to remain behind. Tony attempted to use his puppy dog eyes on Gibbs to get out of the punishment, but it had no effect.

“How did you know all that about the Grinch?” Tony asked, trying to distract Gibbs.

“It was one of Kelly’s favorite Christmas movies. We watched it a lot. I was bound to pick up some knowledge.”

Tony nodded and moved stealthily towards the door. 

“Hold it right there, DiNozzo.”

Tony froze before slowly turning around to face Gibbs.

“What were you thinking?”

“It’s Christmas, Gibbs. The team needed something fun to remind them that the Holidays aren’t just dead bodies and cases.”

“Next time, ask first.” Gibbs glared.

“Yes, boss. Of course, boss. Thank you, boss.” Tony bobbed his head up and down as he backed up out the door and then hightailed it out of there before Gibbs could change his mind about whether he was angry over the invasion or not.

**Author's Note:**

> The dictionary.com series has 1 story already written for it after this one, so I will be posting at least 1 more story before I stop posting again. I'm hoping to get more stories written before then, so that I don't stop posting for a while. Wish me luck! 
> 
> 2019 is almost over now! If you haven't used up your 50 prompts you only have one more month to do so. Go [here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/cutsycat_NCIS_Prompts_2019/profile) to add your prompts to my 2019 Prompt Collection. Just click the sign up link. ;) It will remain open until the beginning of 2020. I'm hoping to complete all the 2019 prompts by the end of 2020. 
> 
> If you are not an ao3 member, you can prompt me [here](http://cutsycat.livejournal.com/50701.html). Please follow the same rules as are listed in the above link. However, because this is a handmade prompt form(that thinks it's a poll), it is considerably more limited than what ao3 provides, so please use the ao3 form if you're an ao3 member. Please note the name option is for a name that I can say this is for so that you know it's for you. Since this is for non ao3 members it won't be true gifts, but you will be mentioned in the notes. Please note if you have already voted in the poll and would like to request more stories you can just add a comment to the poll. Please include the name along with the prompt, so that I can appropriately gift the prompt to you.
> 
> For any authors that want to chat and/or are looking for a place where they can toss plot ideas around and get input from people, you can come join my discord server that is specifically geared towards writing/encouraging people to write and authors. The invite link is [here](https://discord.gg/HFvwpCq). If you're not an author, but want to chat with me about writing/stories or anything else you are welcome to join. I reserve the right to boot you from my server if all you do is pester me about updates, however. *grin* Really anyone who wants to talk about writing and/or plot ideas for various stories is welcome to join. 
> 
> Also, Drakonyashka has translated a couple of my works into Russian. [Tutelage](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12378780) and [Imbue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12378840). Go support them. 


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